All local game stores that do Friday Night Magic events can get two free passes to the state championship to give out. Contact David Whelan of Lost Legion. You can get one of these passes as a player at all four Lost Legion Games & Comic locations (Beckley, Princeton, South Charleston, and Vienna), Four Horseman in Morgantown, Hometown Hobbies in Huntington, The Gathering in Saint Albans, and Champion Cards in Charleston. Play FNM and possibly win free passes to the championship.

I missed this last time. The annual West Virginia Book Festival is happening October 13 & 14 at the Charleston Civic Center. The Book Festival celebrates literature, books, and storytelling over a two day period. It gathers writers from across the state and from across the rest of the nation too. The festival has a number of attractions including authors, publishers, book vendors, the Festival Marketplace, a special section just for children, a used book sale, meet the author events, workshops and panel discussions. This year they have a number of fandom writers and publishers.

The headliner for this year’s festival is Charlaine Harris the author known known for her Sookie Stackhouse series which is the basis for the TV series True Blood. Charlaine has been writing for over 30 years. She wrote three earlier books series the Aurora Teagarden, the Shakespeare and the Harper Connelly mysteries. The Sookie Stackhouse series, twelve titles so far, of urban fantasy was won awards and been turned into a popular HBO series filming its fourth season now. She started another book series about a woman called Harper Connelly who determine the cause of death of anyone by sight.

She is a member of the Mystery Writers of America, the American Crime Writers League, Sisters in Crime, the International Crime Writers Association, Science Fiction Writers of America, Horror Writers Association, and Romance Writers of America. You can catch her at 2:30 on Saturday. Her appearance is sponsored by Books-A-Million.

Tamora Pierce is a NY Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller with 28 fantasy novels aimed at young readers. Her first book was in 1983, Alanna: The First Adventure, and her latest one is Mastiff which came out just last year. She will be talking about her life and work on Saturday at 4pm. Her appearance is sponsored by the Friends of the Library Foundation of Kanawha County.

Marc Tyler Nobleman has written over 70 books for children of all ages. His most recent one is a nonfiction picture book called Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman. He book Boys of Steel: The Creators of Superman was a 2009 American Library Association Notable Book. Both books chronicling the lives of the men who created Superman and Batman. He has a Q&A on Sunday at 2pm.

There are other writers who do not have speaking panels but will be selling their works.

Edward S. Brenwalt author of the fantasy novel Path of a Hero. Gary Lee Vincent and Rich Bottles of Burning Bulb Publishing, a horror and other bizarre books publisher. Craig Halloran author of The Darkslayer series, Zombie Day Care and Zombie Rehab. Frank Feschino Jr. writer of The Braxton County Monster Revised Edition, brought to you by WVMC – Brothers Bailey Promotions. Kelly R. Martin from Myth/Logic Press, a small press publisher/author of The Lucky Cricket and Tales from the Reading Dragon Inn books.

All and all a great selection for the literary crowd. So if you are free that weekend, there is a lot going down, try and check it out. But don’t take my word for it.

Reading Rainbow quote not endorsed by Levar Burton. Though I did met him once and got a picture with him.

West Virginia natives Blake Wheeler and Jason Pell met while working the electronics department at Toys R Us and became good friends. They are now working on a comic project together called Season’s End and looking to Kickstarter for funding.

Jason Pell is the writer of comic series Zombie Highway and Woody and the Noble. You can check out Blake’s artwork on his own site.

Season’s End will be a horror/fantasy story in hardback form mixing prose with paintings in a non-traditional graphic novel way. Creating something new in the medium.

“The world has grown dark and magic has become tainted and dangerous. A young man, Mimdal, is the last living priest that can perform the miracles of old. He and his protector, the soldier Adrielle, are enlisted to find out why the gods have fallen silent. Along with the brutish Dunlari and his savage captive, Grib, the dark wizard Falhern, and Lidderly, the secretive bard, they seek the terrible truth.

The new gods have come.”

The story is a character driven tale. Each character has their own story that will unfold in the book. You can read about the main characters on the Kickstarter page. It blends with Blake’s unique artwork. He did the paintings, title, and even the borders for each chapter himself. The two of them working for nearly two years on this so far.

The are looking for money to cover printing, shipping, and taxes. About $8 thousand for printing, $2 thousand for shipping the books, $16 hundred for taxes and t-shirts. For a total of $11,600.

Rewards for the helping them out . $15 gets you a PDF of the story and a special wallpaper for you computer. $25 gets you a hardback copy of it. $35 gets you a signed copy plus an original sketch. $50 you get all the previous levels plus a t-shirt. $85 you get a framed piece of the original art used in the book with all the other items; limit of 15. $100 is for comic stores, you get eight signed copies of the book with a poster to promote the book. If your store is two hours or less from Charleston they will even come to your store. $150 comes with one of eleven actual paintings used in the book to hang on your wall. $200 is for one of 32 larger paintings. $250 and $400 gives you even more artwork.

If they are able to go over the goal, they will be offering extra tweaks to the book plus things like bookmarks, prints, and an extra eight page story that was their first collaboration. Which you can read for free here.